The Miracle of Life

“With out DNA there is no self replication; but with out self replication there
is no natural selection. So you can’t use natural selection to explain the origin of DNA,
without assuming the existence of the very thing you are trying to explain” .
—Stephen Meyer PhD.
For life to have spontaneously arisen from the primordial soup,
An instantaneous event creating a fully functional ‘Cell’ capable of self-replication and
energy metabolism would have to have happened. This is because a step by step process
is impossible without self replication to ‘capture’ each step.
Out of the almost infinite number of possible organic chemicals, there is no way of
knowing how many chemical combinations could create this primordial ‘Cell’. We do
know that for organic chemicals to have a structural or enzymatic capability they must
have a precise 3 dimensional shape, this shape is based on what stereo specific isomers
the molecule is made of. ‘Stereo specific’ means that the atoms in the molecules are
arranged around certain carbon atoms in a specific order. These ‘Stereo specific’ isomers
are referred to as either left or right handed, referring to the fact that our hands are also
stereo specific ‘isomers’ of each other.
It appears that the configuration of all of the different molecules within a
given group of chemicals in life must be of the same handedness; not a mixture of ‘left’
and ‘right’. This is evident by the fact that this ‘same handedness law’ is manifested
through out each and every living cell on earth.
It is believed that this proto type cell would have to have a minimum of 100+
proteins with their functional DNA or RNA counterparts. Given an average of 100 amino
acids per protein; that gives the number of amino acids needed to be around 10,000.
A single strand DNA or RNA needed to code for the construction of these proteins would
be over 30,000 bases. This would mean that 40,000 stereo specific molecules would have
been present in the same handedness at the birth of this first cell.
Imagine flipping a coin 40,000 times and coming up with heads each time.
This is the odds of this creation of the ‘Cell’. Remember these odds only concern the
handedness of the molecules and not the make up of the molecules themselves, which is
far more improbable.
The odds of this 40,000 coin toss - -2 to the 40,000th ;
This is roughly 10 followed by 12,000 zeros! (There are less than 10 to the 80th atoms in
the entire universe. ) This event is beyond the reach of chance even considering one
million combinations per second for billions of years in each and every cell size volume
of the ocean. This is equivalent to a 3 x 10 to the 76th coin toss tries.
We at Shady Oak see nature as a testament to the beauty and genius of God the Creator,
not some random event of impossible odds. --- Edith and Stephen Smith